No one knows, of course. Himmelstoss glowers at us wrathfully. “You know very well. You won’t say, that’s the fact of the matter. Out with it!”

Fatty looks round enquiringly; but Tjaden is not to be seen. He tries another way.

“Tjaden will report at the Orderly Room in ten minutes.”

Then he steams off with Himmelstoss in his wake.

“I have a feeling that next time we go up wiring I’ll be letting a bundle of wire fall on Himmelstoss’s leg,” hints Kropp.

“We’ll have quite a lot of jokes with him,” laughs Müller.

That is our sole ambition: to knock the conceit out of a postman.

I go into the hut and put Tjaden wise. He disappears.